Captain Deepak Sathe, pilot of the Air India Express flight who died along with 17 others after the plane crashed at Kerala’s Kozhikode airport, had survived an air crash in the early 1990s when he was in the Air Force and was hospitalised for six months, his cousin said. Sathe had suffered multiple injuries on his skull in that incident, but due to his strong willpower and passion he cleared the test and started flying again.